[H-GEN] peculiar wireless problem on Mandrake laptop

[David O'Brien]

I have Mandrake 10.1 installed on a Dell D800. I use a Netgear wireless card 
to connect to my wireless access point at home, have been using if for 
several months with no trouble. It just hooks up and works (infrastructure 
mode, not ad hoc). I use smb4k, gaim, Firefox, do all sorts of remote 
connections to other boxes (Windows and Linux) at home, the whole works.

Yesterday I installed 3 different instances of XP Pro in VMWare (part of 
Diploma study requirements). I did this in class, and while there was no 
internet or "outside" lan connectivity at the time, I made the three installs 
part of the same workgroup and they could all talk to each other fine. I have 
other Virtual Machines installed which I have used before, they connect to 
the Internet fine. I'm not sure if the Virtual Machine info is related to the 
problem or not.

Part way through the evening we considered hooking up the laptop to the 
wireless lan in the classroom. I got as far as plugging in the card and was 
about to start "fiddling" the configuration but decided against it because I 
didn't really need it in the classroom and I had reservations about messing 
with the setup anyway, rememberiing past experience with wireless setup, and 
being a bit green in the Linux department.

Since then, the wireless connection has been really iffy at home. It does 
connect, but the signal strength is bad, it drops out a lot, I can't connect 
to the Internet (although, strangely, when I start Firefox it goes straight 
to the home page. I can rarely go anywhere else).  smb4k is completely 
unreliable and gaim, etc., keeps dropping connections. I have no idea what's 
going on. If I connect to the lan with cable everything is perfect. With just 
wireless (eth1) I get an IP address, I can ping everything on the lan, 
netmasks, etc., all seem fine, it just seems to lose the plot trying to do 
anything else. One thing I have noticed, if I connect to gaim or whatever it 
seems *reasonable*, but if I then go and try to connect to the 'net, Firefox 
basically hangs and the whole shebang goes pear-shaped.

Apologies for being so long-winded. I'm at a loss as to know what's going on 
here. Any suggestions welcome.

thanks a lot
David

-- 
The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas.
	Edward de Bono